13 November 2013. Urban
poor groups composed of Urban Poor Alliance, Urban Poor Associates, Community
Organizers Multiversity, and other different people’s organizations presented
urban poor peoples’ views on the pork barrel scandal and related matters
November 13 at the Ateneo De Manila.

Professor Prospero “Popoy” De Vera,
University of the Philippines Vice-President for Public Affairs and Senator Benigno “Bam” Aquino spoke to the
group.

Jeorgie Tenolete, President of
Kabalikat sa Kaunlaran in Baseco, Tondo said the poor were shocked by the
amount of money revealed.

Tenolete spoke for all urban poor
when he said: “If that money were spent for the good of the poor majority,
nobody would be begging in the streets, nobody would be evicted because housing
is inadequate, nobody would be out of work, no children would be out of school,
nobody would die because he/she had no money for medicines and nobody would be
hungry. Now that we know there is money, they cannot tell us anymore that there
is no money for basic needs. We will do our best to make sure that the poor
will never be an ingredient in a scam like this—we will organize ourselves to
go against the corrupt.”

The forum called for extending
Philhealth benefits to every poor family; by making sure each student in
elementary school had free uniforms, text books, meals and transport; provide
funds to improve light, water and drainage in the poor communities; creating
jobs; and flooding poor neighborhoods with rice, fish and vegetable at
affordable cost.

The urban poor also pledged action by
organizing signature campaigns and rallies for honest government and in order
to jail pork barrel villains within one year; organizing voters against persons
known to be corrupt; putting a committee of urban poor leaders and NGOs into the
six agencies that received the money that would have gone to the pork barrel in
2014 to monitor the utilization of the funds; work with Bottom-Up Budgeting,
and make citizens’ arrests of corrupt officials.

Alice Murphy, UPA Field Director
said, “this forum is a venue for poor people to get together, share their
sentiments, suggest alternatives and at the same time be enlightened on the
issue of the pork barrel scam. We
believe that by free discussions we can learn and with understanding of the
issues we can come to commitments that will improve the condition of the poor
through better public service.”

She said: “We will start by
advocating PhilHealth for our poor people. Many of our leaders have PhilHealth
but when the time came that they try to use the card and present it in the
hospital, they find out that it was not funded. Many poor people die because
they don’t have access to hospital care.”

No comments:

Post a Comment

ABOUT US

The Urban Poor Associates (UPA) is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit human rights organization. UPA is registered in the Philippines since 1992 and coordinates its activities to groups working with the United Nations (UN). UPA is an organization campaigning for the protection of housing rights and the prevention of forced evictions and illegal demolitions. It was established to educate families in housing rights matters and assist communities in eviction crises.